Wednesday, December 18, 2013

The 12 Blogs of Christmas: Merry Christmas, It's Over!

Being single at Christmas can feel like the end of the world, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Around this time last year, I covered a series in handling breakups called "Shaking Off The Year of the Bad Relationship". Today's guest blogger is Rosie from York, England and she does a great job in learning her lesson from a holiday breakup that happened to her. *You can send me your articles for guest blogger consideration to myrelationshiplessons@gmail.com*

I was at a university in the UK, and in the eighth month of a relationship with a guy we’ll call Dan (because that was his name). Despite living 200 miles apart, we’d managed to keep our long-distance relationship going. As Christmas loomed, we started discussing presents, and Dan asked for the most tuneless instrument known to man, a didgeridoo (a long wooden horn almost the length of your entire body, that bellows out the most God awful sound). As an impoverished student, a didgeridoo would cost a fair chunk of my loan to buy. But love being blind – and apparently deaf, I bought it. I lovingly wrapped it in about ten sheets of paper, then hauled it home on the train from York to Essex. But ten days before Christmas, Dan came round to my house and casually told me ‘it wasn’t working’. I was pretty sure there were rules somewhere against festive dumping, but apparently he hadn’t read them. I was left with not just a broken heart, but a 4 foot Aboriginal instrument to get rid of (not something you can easily pawn off).

Being dumped when everyone else is cosily coupled up hurts more than at any other time of year. At least Valentine’s Day is just a single day, not an entire season. Christmas is so family and relationship orientated, there are lots more things around reminding you about being together, plus it’s likely you would've made plans which had to be changed, so you suffer a physical loss as well as an emotional one. But while it might seem kinder to keep quiet until the tree’s down, Christmas is renowned for testing even the strongest of couples. Lots of people split up around Christmas, and as the end of the year approaches, it puts pressure on couples to think about where they’re headed. It’s only natural to start mulling over your plans for the future. On top of that, as the party season gets underway, people can feel burnt out, and all that drinking can lead to heated arguments or dangerous liaisons. All of which spell disaster if your relationship isn’t rock-solid.

Back to the story. I asked Dan for the sake of research for this article of course, why he’d chosen Christmas to dump me. “I thought it was better to do it when you were at home with family and friends” he says. “And I wanted to give you as much time before you went back to the university as possible.” All of which makes sense, but with Christmas being all about togetherness, it can feel like the endless repeats of Love Actually are mocking your suddenly-single status. Even worse, unlike other times of year, your girlfriends aren’t always on hand to help you pick up the pieces. It is possible to turn being suddenly single to your advantage, especially at Christmas. You can take the festive spirit as a reminder of the split, or as a reminder of all the other people who care for you. Christmas is a time of extra connection with people you love, followed swiftly by the new year, which is all about renewal. You can use the time in between to look at the relationship which has ended and decide what went wrong.

A 31 year old single mother I know went even further, using a festive break-up to turn her life around. She’d been with her boyfriend for three and a half years when they split up two weeks before Christmas. Although it was her who made the decision to leave, it was still very difficult. But she decided to use the time to be romantic towards herself. Two days before Christmas she threw a huge dinner with friends, and bought herself some presents. She then used her new-found freedom to move to London, which lead to a book deal. She felt wounded at the time, but since then her life has totally changed. As for me? I resisted the urge to burn Dan’s didgeridoo and instead, I marched to his house, thrusted it into his hands with a very curt "I think this is yours", and marched off again. Then I discovered the best thing about being suddenly single at Christmas was eating all the turkey I liked, safe in the knowledge that no one would be seeing me naked until well into the new year.

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